Proof - Larissa Andrusyshyn (Punchy Poetry/DC Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Proof.  Larissa Andrusyshyn.  Punchy Poetry/DC Books.  Montreal, Quebec.  2014.

Today's book of poetry hasn't seen Larissa Andrusyshyn's first book, Mammoth (DC Books, 2010), but we are sure going to be looking for it now.

Proof caused all sorts of havoc around the office this morning.  Milo actually read two of Andrusyshyn's poems out loud for the rest of us to hear, a real first, but even more surprising was that Milo followed the reading with a smile.  Another first.  Sad makes Milo happy, go figure.

These poems tend to be quick as a first kiss, sudden as a hornet's mad hello.  Andrusyshyn gets full marks for making the reader feel that candy-coated warmth from a rosy first kiss and then she does the other -- the sting.

Self Portrait

I'm tired of the book shelves,
the stacks I never get to.
The typewriter, with the dry ribbon
I didn't replace.

I get my bearings in detritus.
There was no catastrophe,
just slow erosion.

When I've unwound it all, stretched the skin
of my life out, it'll shrink back to a small strip,
dry out and blow like dust.

I keep looking back, twenty, ten, two,
years ago.

If give the choice,
what if I were there?

Back as the shore
of a previous me, drifting close.

...

Milo has taken the line "Back at the shore of a previous me, drifting close" as his new motto, theme song and potential tattoo.

Andrusyshyn would have us believe that the world can be explained through entomology and mathematics and then she proceeds to provide engaging and convincing examples of her theory, all working towards Proof.  These are sweet and enchanting poems with the right amount of venom and malice.

Proof is one of those books of poems that you roll through while reading quickly, constantly muttering to yourself "yes", "of course", "perfect".

Supernova

We are made of star stuff
--Carl Sagan

The iron in your blood
once burned at the core
of a distant star.

You and I are three explosions--
calcium, carbon, magnesium,
expelled at the speed of light.

We are built
and we separate
in turbulence.

We are elemental--
peering through telescopes
at all that we don't know--
Plasma held together by its own gravity, a star
is creation and death.

Granny sweaters and haircuts replace
the old you. Pixilated remnants
of a changing world.

One burst and the foundations
of planets and bodies and sand are laid.

bone and blood--
what we call
              living things.
And dust, does it remind you of me?

...

These poems are sad and tender like the end of summer and sneaky like that last hidden spider who has moved to an indoor universe.  Larissa Andrusyshyn is a less-is-more poet and has clearly found her stride.  These poems are solid and ring strong with her confident voice.

These poems are that spider you step on as it walks across your autumn kitchen floor, the spider you step on that breaks open like a spent blister, breaks open like a pinata and sends hundreds of bright red spiderlings cartwheeling to every nook and cranny of the room like a crimson spinning wheel.

You won't get it out of your system any time soon.

Earworm

In a cluttered room you call me by the wrong name.
You are most endangered, a dainty bone in the jaw of
a yellow bird. I had wanted to catch your eye. It's open mic
night and the comedians are talking over each other. The
man with his hand in my hair whispers "you're as cold as
the tundra."  I take whiskey and write my name on all the
coasters like a chorus i can sing to myself over and over.

...

Today's book of poetry liked the pace of Proof, loved the poems.  We liked how it walked right to the middle of the room and made Milo smile.  No small feat.

Larissa Andrusyshyn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Larissa Andrusyshyn’s first book Mammoth (DC Books 2010) was shortlisted for the QWF First Book Prize and the Kobzar Literary Award. Her poems have been shortlisted for Arc Magazine’s Poem of the Year and the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award. She works withsys a local non-profit to offer creative writing workshops to at-risk youth. She lives, writes and is planning her zombie apocalypse survival strategy in Montreal.

Larissa Andrusyshyn

Poetry from Pain

video: Montreal Gazette Videos

dcbooks.ca

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

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The Montreal Book Of The Dead - Mary di Michele (Vallum Chapbook Series #17)

Today's book of poetry:
The Montreal Book Of The Dead.  Mary di Michele.  Vallum Chapbook Series #17 - The Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters.  Montreal, Quebec.  2014.

The Montreal Book Of The Dead is a sterling little treat from the ever-strong voice of Mary di Michele.  di Michele is just a couple of years older than I am which is to say I have been around since her first book, Tree of August, which was published in 1978.

But it was the 1980 publication of Bread and Chocolate that turned me into a life-long reader and admirer of Mary di Michele.

Nothing has changed here, Today's book of poetry has all sorts of time for anything Mary di Michele writes.

The Unteachable

To be as if never born, Javier Marias
shows the dark back of time to critics, cats
and dogs, pronouncing how little of what
they are will last. Perhaps because I teach

what, I am told, is unteachable,
I want to defend scholars, remind the writer
that even this stone I kick is more assuredly immortal
than Shakespeare. We are all palimpsests

for genomes: writers, critics, and our pets.
Rumi was long-lived for a cat, seventeen years.
And many years have passed along with him,
yet still, raising my eyes from a book of poetry,

not scratched up by his jealous claws,
I might see him, in the periphery
of my vision, the striped gray fur turning
a corner. Disappearing.

Buddy was the first to teach me to love
dogs, to trust them with my hand, my heart
if not my muffins. What did I know?
I wanted a literary dog name, Bolden

from Coming Through Slaughter. Instead I was
given another way of being in the world,
away from the reading lamp, those long
evenings with him, ambling under stars,

walks in any weather. To be as if never
born. This cold Montreal spring, the run-off
iced over again, I am careful as I walk myself
across the park, not stopping to smell anything.

...

These poems are full of tender ghosts.

They are also so approachable that it is easy to miss how well crafted they are.  OK, that wasn't clear at all  --  what I mean is that di Michele knows her stuff.  These are poems that know how to act.

The Montreal Book Of The Dead is a long sighed-out love letter to di Michele's favourite city.  A tempered and loving elegy to the dead who swim in her memory.

Scotopia

Beacon shining from the top of Mount Royal,
a cross, unblinking under Capricorn.

Beaver lake is iced over. The ring
in his pocket stays in his pocket.

In the shadow of the red-tailed hawk, what's left
of a crow is now just tail feathers and wings

splayed out in the arms of a maple. To look
is to look away. Where the earth is flat we forget

we walk on a planet, but, from the view
at the summit, we remember

we are not alone, married and unmarried
alike for the stellar bridegroom,

orbiting above, astronaut or angel,
watches over us from the stratosphere.

In a flash, we see what he sees, the city
below from space: the mystery,

illuminated. This island city! This
island, Earth! Animal or mineral,

we all bow to the darkness,
we all turn in the light.

...

Mary di Michele has a type of quiet elegance in her poetry, this has always been the case.  It isn't easy to write with restraint - in di Michele's poems I would call this wisdom tempered with exactitude.

The Montreal Book Of The Dead is a fine chapbook.  It makes you want more.

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled

I arrived at the Canada-US border.
Flags fluttered though there was no wind.
Mine was the sole vehicle at the crossing.

I pulled up to a booth. Nobody
was there, I got out of my car
to peer behind the wicket: darkness

except for the blinking light of a phone.
I had my Canadian passport ready
declaring my Italian birth. The photo

didn't look like me. It felt strange to be
neither here nor there, neither coming
nor going. I arrived at the US-Canada border,

flags the only things moving.
The sun was low but I cast no shadow.

...

Mary di Michele

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Poet, novelist, and member of the collaborative writing group, Yoko’s Dogs,Mary di Michele is author of eleven books including a selected poems,Stranger in You, Oxford University Press 1995, and the novel, Tenor of Love, Viking Canada, Simon & Schuster USA 2005. She lives in Montreal where she teaches at Concordia University. Her most recent books are The Flower of Youth, Pier Paolo Pasolini Poems, ECW Press, 2011, and with Yoko’s Dogs,Whisk, Pedlar Press 2013. Awards include first prize, CBC literary competition, the Air Canada Writing Award, and The Malahat Review long poem.

BLURB

“Envisioning the passage of time under the “full and unwaning” moon of Mont Royal’s beacon cross, di Michele recalls her Italian immigrant parents in Toronto and her current life in Montreal. This sequence, a sort of decameron, written with her customary brightness and gracefulness of diction, concludes at a deserted customs office where no one wants to see her passport: the truly borderless place of poetry itself.”

     - Sharon Thesen

Mary di Michele

Discusses tradition and innovation and studying

creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal.

Video courtesy of: Concordia Creative Writing

vallummag.com 

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Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.